
‘That place is a nightmare’: 30 years of Coors Field pitching horror stories
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adminThirty years ago, the New York Mets and Colorado Rockies opened Coors Field on April 26,1995 in a game that would embody the beauty (if you’re a hitter) and absurdity (if you’re a pitcher) of the ballpark, when they combined for 20 runs and 33 hits in an 11-9, 14-inning Colorado win. It was just the beginning of a baseball experience like no other.
Standing 5,280 feet above sea level in Denver’s LoDo neighborhood, the picturesque ballpark is one of the sport’s gems, constantly ranking near the top of MLB stadium rankings and keeping the Rockies’ attendance among the league’s highest regardless of the home team’s record.
“Since 1995 I’ve been at nearly 95% of the games played at Coors Field,” owner Dick Monfort told ESPN last week. “Of all those thousands of games, my fondest memories are of a sold-out ballpark on an 85-degree day with no humidity, a beautiful sunset, and 50,000 men, women and kids soaking in the timeless magic of iconic Coors Field.”
But for the pitchers who have taken the mound at the stadium over the past three decades, Coors Field is something else: a house of horrors.
‘S—, the whole time there was a horror story, man,” said Marvin Freeman, who started 41 games for the Rockies over the first two years of the ballpark. “We called it arena baseball. It was like a pinball machine up in there sometimes. Balls were flying out of there. And you just had to make sure when you did leave Colorado you maintained some sanity because it could be hard on your mentality.”
To commemorate the anniversary of a launching pad like no other, we asked those who have pitched or taken the field at a place where breaking balls don’t break and a mistake left over the plate can travel 500 feet into the mountain air to share their best (er, worst) Coors Field horror stories.
A big swing haunts you: ‘It’s all part of the Coors experience’
On May 28, 2016, Carlos Estevez was less than a month into his major league career when he entered in the eighth inning against the San Francisco Giants with a daunting task: facing a future Hall of Famer in a one-run game.
Before Buster Posey stepped into the batter’s box, Estevez’s Colorado coaches and teammates gave the reliever some advice on how to approach the situation.
“I remember throwing a fastball away,” Estevez recently recalled to ESPN. “He could crush pitches close to him. ‘Stay safe. Go away. He’s going to single to right field, worst-case scenario.’ I’m new. The new guy was showing up.”
When Posey connected on a 96 mph fastball on the outer half of the plate with a 2-0 count, it momentarily appeared to Estevez that following the advice had paid off.
“I go [points in the air like pitchers do for popups]. It was one of those. The ball goes out. I didn’t even look anywhere else. I just kept my face down,” Estevez said. “Oh my god. That was so bad. After that, never again — unless I knew the ball was right on top of me. Man, that was bad. I felt so bad. The older guys, of course, made so much fun of me with that. Like, bro, you don’t know where you’re pitching.”
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Flashback: Buster Posey cranks his second 3-run HR of the game
On May 28, 2016, Giants catcher Buster Posey takes Carlos Estevez deep for his second three-run homer of the game at Coors Field.
If Estevez can take solace in anything from that day, it is that his experience mirrors that of pitchers throughout the sport — just ask Ubaldo Jiménez, who had a run of stardom for the Rockies until being traded in 2011. “We were like, you can never point up, you can never think it is a fly ball, because it’s probably going to go out.”
Jerry Dipoto, Rockies reliever (1997-2000) and current Mariners general manager: I saw some of the longest home runs that a human can possibly hit. At the height of Mark McGwire, I watched him literally hit one over the scoreboard, which, if you have a chance and you stand at home plate, look at the left-field scoreboard, the Coke bottle that used to run alongside the scoreboard. He hit it over the Coke bottle, into the parking lot, through the windshield of Jerry McMorris, our owner, which was awesome.
Andrés Galarraga and Mike Piazza hit home runs over the center-field fence, over the forest in the rock waterfall up there, and up into the concourse that has like a 20-foot opening, looks like something out of “Star Wars,” and they were both line-drive missiles that probably only stopped because they hit something out in the concourse.
Ryne Nelson, opposing pitcher: I haven’t pitched there a ton, but C.J. Cron hit a ball that felt like it was 10 feet off the ground the whole way and it left the yard. So I’m not sure if it would’ve been a home run everywhere, but it was one of the more impressive home runs that I’ve given up.
Dipoto: I can remember giving up a homer to Henry Rodriguez to left field, one year when he was at the height of hitting homers. It was like a broken-bat, end-of-the-bat, oppo, what I thought was just a floater. It wound up in the wheelchair section out there.
Jeremy Guthrie, Rockies starter (2012): I was facing the Oakland Athletics. And they hit at least two, maybe three, upper-deck home runs. I was not under the impression they weren’t going to go out. Seeing balls go further and further and fans boo louder and louder, though — it’s all part of the Coors experience.
Dipoto: They had a row of seats in the upper deck in right field that was like a ring around the upper-deck seats, and it was a mile above sea level. An absurd distance beyond home plate.
I remember I had a really difficult time through the years with Ray Lankford. And Jeff Reed was catching me one day and I’m trying to get fastballs by Ray Lankford and I can’t get anything past him. It’s foul ball, foul ball, it feels like a 10-pitch AB. And he comes walking out. And every day in spring training, in my catch game, I’d throw a changeup. I didn’t actually have one or throw it in a game. It was just something to try to get some feel. Reeder came to the mound and said, “Hey, what do you think about just throwing that changeup?” I said, “I’ve never done it in a game, Reeder.”
He said, “Yeah, if you’ve never done it in a game, he won’t be expecting it either.” So I threw a changeup, and I actually threw it for a strike, and he hit it above the purple seats. It wound up going a mile. Like literally going a mile.
Tyler Anderson, Rockies starter (2016-19) and current Angels pitcher: My rookie year when I was called up … I remember there was a runner on first and two outs, which usually you feel pretty safe.
[Evan Longoria] hit like a line drive that got past the second baseman, where normally you’re like, “All right, there’s runners on first and third now.” And it just like rolled all the way to the wall. He got a triple and the runner scored from first. And I remember thinking to myself, How the heck is that a triple? Obviously I was pretty young in my pitching career, but I pitched a lot in college and the minor leagues, and that was never a triple. That was crazy. I remembered that. And I always thought pitching in Coors Field, it doesn’t matter if there’s only a runner on first, you’re never safe. Two outs, runner on first sometimes could feel safe, but it’s never safe.
Freeman: I always liked to say that every bad game that I had at Coors Field was because of Coors Field, not me. I usually fall back on that. But I do remember one particular case where I made it into the ninth inning, my son was going to be born the next day, and I was actually on the mound thinking about pitching my first complete game.
I ended up giving up a home run to Hal Morris. He hit an opposite-field home run on me. And Ellis Burks, I thought he was going to jump the fence and bring it back, but he didn’t catch it. And then I end up getting knocked out of the game in the ninth inning, and we subsequently end up losing that game, and my son was born the next day. That’s really the only game that sticks out to me … you gotta try and survive the next one.
ERAs turn into a scary sight: ‘That place is a nightmare’
Late in the 2023 season, then-Minnesota Twins reliever Caleb Thielbar boarded the plane to Colorado with something treasured by pitchers everywhere — an ERA starting with a 2.
With the Twins trailing 6-4 in the series opener, Thielbar was summoned from the bullpen to face Rockies star Charlie Blackmon. Thielbar retired the Colorado outfielder and left the outing with his sub-3.00 ERA still intact.
But the next day, with the Twins ahead 14-0, Thielbar entered the game in the bottom of the seventh inning — and his ERA wasn’t so lucky that time.
“It was my last outing of the year and I gave up back-to-back homers,” Thielbar told ESPN earlier this month. “And it bumped my ERA up over 3.00. And just one of those things that makes you mad and it stuck with me for a little bit.
“I don’t understand how to pitch there. For some reason, the Rockies have always kind of gotten me — no matter home or away — so they really got me there. But that place is a nightmare.”
Even though the back-to-back home runs hit by Colorado’s Elehuris Montero and Sean Bouchard pushed Thielbar’s ERA from 2.67 to a season-ending 3.23 mark, you’ll have to excuse some other pitchers who might not feel too badly for someone whose Coors Field horror story only involves allowing two runs.
Guthrie: I don’t know that I had any good outing at Coors. I know my ERA was 9.50 [at Coors] and 3.67 on the road that year. I really did want to pitch well there. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. I went in with high hopes and a positive attitude. There aren’t as many people who go in with a good attitude as you hope. I really felt like the organization treated pitchers, and especially new pitchers, in a way where it’s almost inevitable you’re going to struggle. You need to change the way you prepare. You need to be aware of how your body is going to react at high altitude. Nothing felt different physically. I just pitched a lot worse.
Among the 223 pitchers with at least 40 innings at Coors, Guthrie’s 9.50 ERA is second worst, ahead of only Bryan Rekar, who posted a 10.16.
Walker Buehler, opposing pitcher: If you’re a starting pitcher and you normally go six, seven innings — going five innings there is some sort of accomplishment. I think honestly the toughest part from our side of it is not necessarily the home run, which a lot of people think it is. The field is so big. You give up a lot of hits you normally don’t give up.
On June 27, 2019, Buehler gave up 13 hits over 5⅔ innings at Coors, although the Dodgers won the game 12-8. Buehler gave up seven of the eight runs and his ERA rose from 2.96 to 3.43.
Honestly, it’s probably a top-five ballpark in baseball, but I just don’t think our game should be played at that kind of elevation. It legitimately changes the game. It’s just different. I don’t know if there’s some sort of f—ing dome vacuum technology thing we can get going there or what.
The scoreboard becomes a horror show: ‘Every game there is like a football game’
Sometimes it doesn’t matter who is on the mound at Coors Field, especially in the summer months when the days get warmer and the Rocky Mountain air gets even drier. An entire pitching staff can leave the ballpark with a battered ERA.
In fact, teams have averaged at least five runs per game at Coors Field in every season it has existed. Over that span, there were just three seasons since 1995 when the MLB average was 5.0 runs per game or more (1996, 1999 & 2000).
Even in the ballpark’s long history of scores that look like they belong in a football game, four-hour marathons of runners touching home plate and double-digit rallies, one series stands out from the crowd. Over four days on Father’s Day weekend of 2019, the Rockies and Padres combined to score 92 runs, setting a modern record for runs in a four-game series by surpassing a total set by the Philadelphia Phillies and Brooklyn Dodgers … in 1929.
“Every game was like 15 to 14 or something like that. We would take the lead and then they would take the lead and then they would take the lead back,” recalled Trevor Story, the Rockies’ shortstop from 2016 to 2021 and a current Red Sox infielder. “It was just back and forth the whole way. Every game of the series was this way, so it was just mentally exhausting. You felt like whoever hit last was going to win. I think we lost a series and it ended up, it was just kind of deflating because we put up all those runs. That series sticks out to me.”
The teams scored in double digits five times, six runs were the fewest for either team in any game, and the Padres’ team ERA jumped from 4.23 to 4.65 while the Rockies’ rose from 4.97 to 5.29.
“My god, that series against the Padres. PTSD still. Between both teams, we scored 92 runs in a four-game series. It was miserable,” Estevez said. “That series just ran through everyone. Everyone gave up runs. [Fernando] Tatis had an amazing series. I don’t know what he didn’t do. I mean, he didn’t pitch.”
While not every series is quite that extreme, almost anyone who has spent enough time at Coors Field has a similar story to tell.
Ryan Spilborghs, Rockies outfielder, 2005-11: One of my favorite memories of Coors Field was against the Cardinals. We were down 7-1 in the bottom of the ninth inning, and we ended up walking off the Cardinals. The best part of it was Tony La Russa. Threw his hat and broke his glasses. And so the next day, it was a Sunday and they didn’t have time to get his glasses fixed so you could see him. He got them taped. Looked like the Poindexter glasses. So we’re just loving it. We’re like, “Hey, we broke La Russa’s glasses.”
Bruce Bochy, opposing manager: We had a game in which Bob Tewksbury started great, six or seven good innings. I had to take him out when we were ahead 9-2, and Willie Blair went in and we lost 13-12.
Dan O’Dowd, Rockies general manager, 1999-2014: You’d give up five or six runs, and you’d be like — ah, no problem. You never felt like you were out of it.
Clint Hurdle, Colorado Rockies manager, 2002-09, and current hitting coach: It’s almost like when we were playing street basketball. You get your two teams together. Last bucket wins, right? That’s what I realized early on. But it was going to be a blessing and a curse because your position players actually started believing we’re never out of it.
Jack Corrigan, Rockies radio broadcaster: Even with the humidor and everything else, the outfield’s the biggest in baseball, the wind — I think sometimes that’s why it’s a great place to watch a game. The Rockies might be a bad team that particular year or whatever, but it might be a heck of a game.
Trevor Hoffman, opposing pitcher: Every game there is like a football game. The offense always has a chance. I cannot imagine playing 81 games a year like that.
The altitude goes to your head: ‘This is not baseball’
Jim Leyland took the job as Rockies manager in 1999 coming off a sustained run of success in Pittsburgh and Miami — and lasted only a year. Buck Showalter managed the opposing Diamondbacks in one of Leyland’s final games in Colorado, and after the game, Leyland told him he was finished. “He said, ‘I’m out of here. You can’t win here.’ He was done,” Showalter recalled over the weekend. “He said, ‘I love the game, I want to manage baseball. This is not baseball.'”
Near the end of that season, Leyland turned to then-first-year general manager Dan O’Dowd and said, “Do you have any f—ing idea what you’ve gotten yourself into?”
O’Dowd stayed with the organization through the 2014 season and was constantly racking his brain for ways to manage the unusual circumstances in Colorado.
With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, he says he would try the model that the Rays use: build around player development, and then, when young players are at their peak trade value, flip them for a big return. “I’d have waves and waves of depth — power arms, strike throwers and athletic guys.”
Showalter was heavily involved in the planning and building of another expansion team of that era, the Arizona Diamondbacks, and wonders how the pitcher-centric approach would work sustainably at Coors Field. If you were running the Rockies, he said, “You’d have to develop your own pitchers. You’d take pitchers in all 20 rounds. You’d have to be three layers deep.”
The longtime manager also noticed during his time competing against the Rockies that there was always some new idea on how to conquer Coors Field.
“It seems like everybody has had some magic potion [to deal with the elevation], but none of them worked,” Showalter said. “It wore on you physically to play games there.
“What they should do is put a 40-foot-high jai alai wall and play it off the fence, and use four outfielders.”
O’Dowd’s attempts to reinvent baseball at altitude were never that extreme, but he did oversee the deployment of the ballpark’s humidor in 2002, and looking back, he “almost wishes I hadn’t.” In some ways, it mitigated the home-field advantage that the Rockies had in the early days of the ballpark — and he believes that in order for the Rockies to have success, they have to thrive at home, because the inherent closer-to-sea-level or at-sea-level conditions in road games will always be a disadvantage for the team.
“We were looking for a way to normalize the game. … In hindsight, it would’ve been better to not have it.”
Bud Black, Rockies manager, 2017-present: Other managers, coaches come to me. I’m sure they came to Baylor. Leyland quit after one year. They say, “How do you do it? How can you hang in there?” I just know that when I was with the Padres and we’d come in, our hitters were like, “Yes!” Our pitchers were like, “Oh, s—.” You can see pitchers visibly rattled.
Freeman: It wasn’t just the Rockies. It was the visitors. Some of them guys that came in, they were coming up with mysterious injuries for three days when they came in for a series with the Rockies, man. I know for a fact some of my Braves buddies used to ask me all the time, “How do you guys survive mentally out here?” We’re like, “We just look forward to going on the road when it’s our time to pitch.”
Bochy: They had one of those smoke shops by the ballpark. I always said they put that there for the managers, to stop there and get something that would get them through the game.
It’s a different game — a totally different game. It’s a beautiful ballpark, with the architecture, the Rockpile, everything they have there. But it changed how you played the game. You had to manage a little bit different, stay with your starting pitchers a little longer because you could really tear up your bullpen over a series.
LaTroy Hawkins, Rockies reliever, 2007, 2014-15: I think because they let the elements intimidate them. They’re mind-f—ed already, before they even get there and before they even take the mound. They’re already mind-f—ed. And that’s not having a positive attitude about the situation. Hey, everybody else pitches in this stadium. Everybody else. I’m going to have to pitch in it too. Let me go in it with a positive mental approach — PMA — a positive mental approach to Coors Field. And that’s how I got through it.
Kyle Freeland, Rockies starter, 2017-present: It is not an easy place to pitch. It comes with its factors with the altitude, the dryness, how hard it is to recover in that environment that guys throughout the rest of the league don’t understand until they come to Coors for a four-game series and they realize their body feels like crap on Day 2, and that’s a big factor.
Shawn Estes, Rockies starter, 2004: You always looked at the calendar when the schedule opened and you knew when you were going to pitch and when you’re not going to pitch. So you know you have three trips into Coors and you have a pretty good idea if you’re going to pitch in any of those series. Put it this way, if you find out you’re not pitching for three games there, it’s probably the best road trip you take of the year.
Dipoto: I remember the first or second year of interleague [games], John Wetteland, who at that time was one of the best closers in the league, comes in and blows a save. He was really fighting himself. And the next day, he comes out and gets ready to walk in from the visitors bullpen and he [knocks] on the cage, and he looks at us all getting ready for the start of the game, and he says, “I have to know, how do you guys do this?” And everybody told him the same thing: “Short memory, man. You just have to move on.”
Ubaldo Jimenez, Rockies starter, 2006-11: Colorado is a different monster than anything else. If you go out there for a couple innings and you start throwing, I don’t know, 20, 25 pitches, you’re probably going to be out of breath right away. If you run to cover first base, when you go back to the mound, you’re going to feel the difference.
I wanted to be out there regardless of how difficult it was. I wanted to be out there for the fans. It made me develop; it made me be a better pitcher because I work hard. I work really hard. I worked so hard, running-wise and conditioning-wise. I remember I used to do the stairs in the stadium, or I used to go to Red Rocks Amphitheatre that’s like 20 minutes away from Denver, like going to the mountains. Rocky is the one who inspired me for sure. Every time I had to run in the mountains, I ran — I just didn’t chase the chicken. Other than that, I did pretty much everything Rocky did just to get ready for Coors Field.
Your stuff disappears in thin air: ‘They tell you to keep it down, don’t listen’
Pitchers are taught to “trust their stuff” from the time they first pick up a baseball, but at Coors Field, they learn quickly that pitches don’t do what’s expected.
During Dipoto’s four seasons in Colorado, Rockies relievers bonded over the shared experience of sitting beyond the outfield walls while waiting to go in and find out how their stuff would fare on a given night.
“There’s a storage room in the back of the bullpen at Coors Field, where during the course of a game — because you’re so far out, I mean, it’s the biggest field in the league — we would sit because we had a small TV at that time that would allow us to see what was happening in the game. … There’s these brick walls, painted brick walls. Every reliever had his own brick, and you got to write a message to all the relievers that came after you. It was related to the ballpark, some of the challenges. It was almost like a yearbook, but it was, in theory, preserved forever because it was on a brick wall.
“The trick was you weren’t allowed to have a brick until you gave up four runs in an inning. And everybody had a brick. So this was going on for like five years, and everybody who had come and gone had their own brick, even guys who were kind of small-time then. And [general manager] Bob Gebhard walked in one day and saw the messages on the wall and got angry with the relievers for writing on the wall and had the grounds crew paint over it. All of a sudden what was really something special that you could pass along from generation to generation, and mostly just laugh it off, like you have to be able to laugh at that, got covered over.
“My brick was something along the lines of, ‘They tell you to keep it down — don’t listen.’
“I went to Colorado. And the first thing — Billy Swift was one of our starters. And I walked into the clubhouse; we shared an agent. Billy shook my hand and he said, ‘Sinkerballer, right?’ And I said ‘yeah.’
“He said ‘Good luck, bro. It doesn’t work.'”
Even when the humidor was added after Dipoto’s time in Colorado, pitchers routinely saw their trusted pitch mixes abandon them at high altitude.
Spilborghs: A couple of years ago, they had to repaint in the bullpen [again], but if you went into the bullpen before, all there, all these great names of pitchers like Huston Street, Tito Fuentes, literally all these great bullpen arms, and they’d have their line — a third of an inning, nine hits, nine runs — written on the wall. Just to prove to you that Coors Field would get everybody.
Estevez: What you’re used to, it doesn’t work up there. If you’re a big sweeper guy, the sweeper doesn’t do anything, it just spins. Guys that are not up there for a long time, they go, like, “Man, my sweeper is off today.”
No, bro, it’s not. It’s just Coors Field. You’re fine. Trust me. That’s the thing. Even your fastball doesn’t ride as much. What plays better over there is changeups. It’s hard to find what truly works over there. For me, you’ve got to find the consistency.
Zack Wheeler, opposing pitcher: I’ve been lucky to miss it a bunch, thankfully. I did get roughed up there early in my career, but you hear about breaking stuff not breaking like it should. The ball flies, of course. When I made the All-Star team in 2021, when the game was there, the bullpen catcher told me to break out my changeup if I had a good one. I didn’t know about that until he told me. So now I tell everyone that I know, “Hey, if you have a good changeup, use it.”
Anderson: The ball flies, your stuff doesn’t move. When you throw two-seams, sometimes they cut. So if you’re a two-seam guy — like you know the seam-shift, right? I think what’s happening with some of these two-seams is they’re a seam-shift to two-seam where the seam catches, then it gets to two-seam. And maybe because the air is thinner it doesn’t have the same catch. So it just cuts instead.
Hoffman: The thing that I remember about pitching in Coors is that you just couldn’t feel the baseball.
The former star reliever tried different methods to get some moisture onto his hands to rub up the ball. Saliva didn’t work, because he would be dried out — it’d be like spitting cotton balls, he said. Remnants from chewing gum could make the surface too tacky.
Hoffman is in the Hall of Fame largely because of the excellence of a straight changeup that he threw — and when he pitched at Coors, it just wasn’t the same changeup.
The velocity was the same, but the pitch just didn’t have the same depth. I threw some good ones, but sometimes the changeup would just sit there, like it was on a tee.
Of course, it was Hoffman’s Padres teammate, Jake Peavy, who took the mound in the most famous game in Coors Field history — Game 163 of the 2007 MLB season.
Late in the regular season, the Padres were fighting to clinch a playoff spot and knew in the last weekend that if they tied the Rockies, necessitating a play-in game, the tiebreaker would be held in Coors Field. Needing just one win to wrap up a berth, the Padres lost on Saturday — and Jake Peavy met with manager Bud Black and general manager Kevin Towers and lobbied hard for them to let him pitch the next day in Milwaukee. Peavy begged Black and Towers to let him pitch Game 162 in Milwaukee on Sunday, and he thought that Towers would back him. But Peavy was overruled: Black and Towers hoped that the Padres would clinch without Peavy, so they could line him up against the Phillies’ Cole Hamels in Game 1 of the playoffs. Instead, the Padres lost Sunday, and Peavy started Game 163 in Colorado.
Peavy: I’ve been part of a lot of great games there, but that place is not baseball. It’s a different game than anywhere else. I was a sinker-slider guy, but I didn’t use the sinker there; I couldn’t. Because half the time the ball would cut and go the opposite way.
That team was hotter than anybody on the planet, and [the elevation] took my sinker away from me — and I didn’t have that against Holliday, Todd Helton and Troy Tulowitzki. That’s a huge weapon taken away.
What happened in Game 163 was classic Coors: Colorado led 3-0, fell behind 5-3, the two sides swapping the lead back and forth. Peavy allowed six runs in 6⅓ innings. The Padres took an 8-6 lead in the top of 13th, and in the bottom of the inning, the Rockies scored three to win 9-8 on Matt Holliday’s famous slide. Peavy has never looked at a replay of the close game-ending play at home plate.
What’s the point?” Once he’s called safe, it doesn’t matter anymore. We didn’t have replay back then.
Slaying the Coors Field monster: ‘My first time pitching at Coors was unbelievable’
Yet despite all of the horror stories, some pitchers have managed to succeed at Coors Field, whether for a single start or a sustained period — and speak of their experience in the same conquering manner a mountain climber would after scaling a hallowed peak.
Shawn Estes was well-versed in pitching at Coors Field when he joined the Rockies for the 2004 season, having spent the first seven seasons of his career with the division-rival San Francisco Giants. Though his 5.84 ERA was the worst of any full season during his 13-year career, he also won 15 games for the Rockies during his lone season in Denver, and he credits a mindset shift for helping him succeed.
“As a [Rockies] player pitching in Coors Field, I could care less what my ERA was. That wasn’t my mentality at all. It was about winning. And fortunately I had enough years of playing against the Rockies in Coors Field where I knew exactly what I was getting into.
“It was really trying to get through five innings, minimize the damage and know that your offense is going to score runs as well. As a visiting player, it was all about survival when you went to Coors Field and just trying to somehow get through the meat of that order with as little the damage as possible.”
But of the 34 starts he made for the Rockies in 2004 (15 of them in Colorado), it was the last time he took the mound at Coors Field in a home uniform that still resonates most for Estes, because he outdueled a Hall of Famer — and even registered a base hit off him.
“I remember beating Randy Johnson there for my 15th win in 2004. And I got a hit off him. Yep, I threw seven innings. That was probably my best game that season when you consider everything.”
Estes is not the only one who looks back with fondness at the times he stood tall at the game’s highest elevation.
Mark Leiter Jr., opposing pitcher: My first time pitching at Coors was unbelievable. I punched out nine in four innings. Second time I pitched at Coors, struck out five in the first two innings and it was early in the season so I got tired. I would say the thing about Coors is it definitely fatigues you a little more. That’s definitely real. And I think you have to be precise — like, you can’t have lazy finishes.
I feel like the second you change how you’re pitching because it’s there, you lose out on your flow. And that’s where I think guys get intimidated, if I had the right way to put it. Just being more selective and careful of your off-speed puts you probably in more of a defensive mode.
Jeremy Hefner, opposing pitcher: The game I pitched well, I think it was a makeup of a snowout earlier in the year. So we were somewhere, had to fly to Colorado for one day, and I end up making the start. I gave up a homer right down the left-field line to Tulo. I think CarGo [Carlos Gonzalez] may have hit a double or a hard hit. I got an RBI groundout — bases-loaded RBI groundout. I remember it being very sunny. The opposite of when we came earlier in the season.
Blake Snell, opposing pitcher: I can’t remember just one [horror story] but I can remember the opposite of one. July 19, 2016. My first game there. I gave up one hit. I was young and naïve. I’ve never pitched well there since.
When asked “What do you think of first when you think of Coors Field?” Snell paused before summing up what’s on the minds of many pitchers as they arrive in Colorado’s thin air.
When we fly out.
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‘It all turned so bad so fast’: Inside James Franklin’s Penn State departure
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4 hours agoon
October 16, 2025By
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STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Two nights before James Franklin’s final game at Penn State, an unranked Clarkson University men’s hockey team scored on the fourth-ranked Nittany Lions a minute after puck drop. Behind the net, students erupted into chants of “Fire Franklin” — and resumed the chant after every goal in a 6-4 Clarkson win.
On Saturday, during Penn State’s stunning 22-21 loss to Northwestern, the “Fire Franklin” chants echoed through Beaver Stadium — and never let up.
After a third straight loss, Franklin looked defeated. As if saying goodbye, he stood on the 10-yard line and hugged every remaining player on the field before heading through the south tunnel for the last time as head coach.
There, his wife and daughter waited. He sent them ahead — perhaps so they wouldn’t hear the vitriol that awaited him — as he passed fans lined up on either side of the underpass to the locker room.
“How it all turned so bad so fast,” one Penn State athletic department source said, “I don’t know.”
The Nittany Lions began the season ranked No. 2 in the AP Top 25. They poured millions into building a loaded roster and a seasoned coaching staff that Franklin called his best yet. While the other Big Ten powers were set to debut new quarterbacks, Penn State boasted a three-year starter in Drew Allar, who opened as one of the Heisman Trophy betting favorites.
Coming off a CFP semifinal appearance, Penn State seemed poised to chase its first national title in 39 years. Yet with those expectations came unprecedented pressure on the Nittany Lions, who under Franklin had repeatedly wilted in big games.
As one former Penn State staff member put it, “They were either gonna win it all — or they were gonna implode.”
Six games into Franklin’s 12th season, the Nittany Lions imploded.
They lost in double overtime at home to Oregon, which dropped Franklin to 4-21 at Penn State against AP top-10 opponents, including 1-18 in Big Ten games.
They fell at winless UCLA — a team that had already fired its coach and hadn’t led once all season. Then, they lost to an unranked Northwestern, making Penn State the first team since the 1978 FBS-FCS split to lose consecutive games as 20-point or more favorites.
“It’s 100 percent on me,” Franklin said afterward. “We got to get it fixed — and I will get it fixed.”
By then, Penn State was too broken.
On Sunday, Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft fired Franklin. It was a difficult, emotional parting, as Kraft had a strong relationship with Franklin and respect for how he had built the program. Sources inside the program indicated culture wasn’t the problem — as evidenced by the decision of 10 star players to turn down the NFL draft and return for another season.
“This is not a three-game thing,” Kraft said Monday. “This is really diving into where we are as a program — what is the trajectory of this program?”
That drove Kraft to make the call despite Franklin’s $49 million buyout — the second largest in college football history behind Jimbo Fisher’s $76 million Texas A&M payout.
Franklin, who didn’t immediately respond to texts or calls from ESPN, won 149 games and reached double-digit wins six times in 11 seasons at Penn State, including the previous three.
Yet no matter what he or the program tried, the Nittany Lions couldn’t win in the games that mattered most. And after Penn State failed to beat Oregon, the bottom finally fell out — the school’s fan base and power brokers gave up on its coach ever getting the Nittany Lions over the top.
“I’m here to win a national championship,” Kraft said. “And I believe our fans deserve that.”
Interviews with program insiders detail how a season that began with such promise in Happy Valley spiraled out of control — and what comes next for Penn State.
THE NITTANY LIONS reeled off seven wins to begin last season, setting up a November top-five clash in State College against Ohio State.
Penn State jumped to an early 10-0 lead, but the Nittany Lions failed to score another touchdown. Twice, the Ohio State defense stoned Penn State inside the 5-yard line on the way to a 20-13 victory.
The Buckeyes went on to win the national championship.
Penn State’s brass had seen how Ohio State’s massive financial investment the previous offseason paid off in big moments, from the victory in State College to a dominant run through the playoff.
The Buckeyes sank $20 million into their roster. They kept key players from bolting early for the NFL and landed several star players in the transfer portal. They even hired away UCLA coach Chip Kelly to be offensive coordinator.
This offseason, the Nittany Lions emulated that blueprint.
They found the money to keep Allar and standout running backs Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen on campus. They also hired away Ohio State defensive coordinator Jim Knowles, who had transformed the Buckeyes defense into the best in college football.
After a one-point loss to Ohio State in 2018, Franklin noted that Penn State had gone from a “good football team to a great football team.” But the Nittany Lions still weren’t on an elite level — like Ohio State.
“Right now, we’re comfortable being great,” he said then. “I’m going to make sure that everybody in our program, including myself, is very uncomfortable. … We are going to break through.”
This year, that breakthrough seemed possible.
As one Penn State source said, Kraft and the administration ensured that Franklin had “everything he needed to win a national championship and get rid of that stigma. … You want to keep those running backs? Let’s do it. We need a wide receiver? Let’s f—ing do it. Jim Knowles is out there? How much is it gonna cost? What do you need? Let’s go do it.”
Penn State sources noted that the program’s funding began matching that of Ohio State, Alabama and Georgia. Underscoring that, the Nittany Lions are in the middle of a $700 million renovation to Beaver Stadium, which is set to be completed by the 2027 season.
“There was a lot of momentum trending our way,” one university source said. “But the echo chamber of how good we were started to echo against itself. Like, we’re not just going to make the playoff, we’re going to win the national championship. It just got bigger and bigger, where the expectations were just massive.”
Instead of overwhelming the opposition, though, the Nittany Lions played tense. They struggled under the weight of those expectations, even during the first three wins over Nevada, Florida International and Villanova.
The vaunted running game sputtered, and the defense wasn’t suffocating the opposition as the players adjusted to Knowles’ system. Even then, alarm bells were going off inside the Lasch Football Building.
“The culture had gotten really tight,” one athletic department source said. “People around here were like, ‘We’re going to get f—ing crushed by Oregon.'”
One NFL personnel executive who had scouted those first three games wondered the same.
“They stunk,” he said. “It was like, what’s happening with them?”
Still, coming off a bye, the Nittany Lions had a prime opportunity to prove they were over their big-game flops of the past with the Ducks traveling in for a Sept. 27 prime-time showdown in front of a White Out Beaver Stadium crowd.
“This is going to be a statement game for our season,” Allen told ESPN the week before.
Instead, it was more of the same.
They didn’t get crushed, but struggled for long stretches. The offense under second-year coordinator Andy Kotelnicki never established the running game. Allar couldn’t find a rhythm. And while Oregon coach Dan Lanning aggressively went for it on fourth down five times alone in the first half, Franklin managed the game conservatively.
Facing fourth-and-9 from the Oregon 36-yard line, Franklin sent in the punt team. The ball landed in the end zone, resulting in a touchback. The Ducks capitalized, scoring their first touchdown, then another on their ensuing drive to take a 17-3 lead in the fourth quarter.
That’s when the first “Fire Franklin” chants began to reverberate around Beaver Stadium.
“When you’re more talented than the other team, that doesn’t hurt you,” said an NFL personnel executive, who’s scouted the Nittany Lions this season. “But in these close games where the talent [gap] gets a little bit smaller, it comes down to a few of those decisions that you make in terms of what position you put your team in … you could see Lanning stacking decisions and setting up different things they wanted to do throughout the game. The strategy was clear. … For all of James’ strengths, recruiting and leadership, his major weakness — in-game decision-making — showed up in every close game.”
Allar finally came alive in the fourth quarter and led the Nittany Lions on back-to-back touchdown drives to send the game to overtime. But then on Penn State’s first snap of the second overtime, he threw an interception, handing the Nittany Lions yet another loss in a top-10 matchup.
As fans emptied out of Beaver Stadium, many could be heard chanting “F— Drew Allar.”
In the 12-team playoff era, Penn State’s season technically wasn’t over with one loss. Under Franklin, the Nittany Lions had usually responded well after crushing big-game defeats. After the setback to Ohio State last year, Penn State responded by hammering Washington and Purdue by a combined score of 84-16. After losing to Michigan late in the 2023 season, the Nittany Lions finished off the regular season by dispatching Rutgers 27-6 and Michigan State 42-0.
But with so much riding on this season, the Oregon defeat was an emotional blow that sent the Nittany Lions to the mat.
They never got back up.
“It’s so hard mentally when you expect something big to happen,” a Power 4 assistant of Penn State said. “When that gets devastated so early, some dudes just don’t handle it very well.”
2:01
Stephen A.: Penn State was justified to fire James Franklin
Stephen A. Smith explains why Penn State made the right decision by firing James Franklin.
THE NITTANY LIONS traveled to Pasadena, California, hoping to get their season back on track against winless UCLA. The Bruins had recently fired coach DeShaun Foster and both coordinators after getting thumped by New Mexico 35-10.
But one source close to Penn State described the Nittany Lions as “emotionless” after Oregon.
“The team needed inspiration and confidence,” the source said. “But it was all hesitation.”
The Bruins were 24-point underdogs. They had scored just 57 points in their previous four games combined. But UCLA scored on its first five possessions to take a 27-7 lead into halftime.
“Wide receivers weren’t finishing routes, guys weren’t finishing blocks, the defensive line not being where they’re supposed to be — things that were always done at Penn State weren’t happening,” a program source said.
The Nittany Lions tried to fight back in the second half, but a curious fourth-and-2 call from the UCLA 9-yard line ended the rally. Kotelnicki dialed up an end-around zone-read, and the Bruins buried Allar behind the line of scrimmage.
That play call proved emblematic of Penn State’s offensive struggles under Kotelnicki, who had thrived with gimmicks at Kansas, but failed to fully embrace Penn State’s hard-nosed tradition or get the best out of Allar’s skill set.
“He tries to do a lot of stuff with movement and motions, but it just didn’t play well,” a coach who faced Penn State said. “With the running backs they have and the skill guys they brought in at receiver, you’d have thought they would have been able to get more production out of that group. … [In turn], Drew regressed.”
Afterward in the Rose Bowl tunnels, UCLA’s defensive linemen taunted Allar, saying “first round [quarterback], what?”
Franklin, partially blaming the cross-country travel for the way his team played, was asked if he still believed this was the best combination of coaching and talent he’d had at Penn State.
“How am I supposed to answer that,” he replied, shaking his head. “Obviously I felt that way or I wouldn’t have said it. But after two losses, it’s hard for me to answer that question and say that that’s the case.”
Allar was asked if the Nittany Lions still had a chance of making the playoff.
“What do you think?” he fired back. “Yes.”
One Penn State source called the lackluster performance “mind-blowing.” Another said the Lasch facility “felt like a morgue” leading into Northwestern.
Over the summer at Big Ten media days, Allar said it was time for Penn State “to get over that hump” in big games. Suddenly, the Nittany Lions couldn’t win the smaller ones, either.
The pressure had gotten to them.
“It wasn’t fair to the kids,” a source close to the program said. “It’s just not, because you’re not at your best when you’re worried about making a mistake, and you’ve got to be perfect. Then you lose the love of what you do, and you lose your confidence and you’re just a shell of yourself.”
That applied to Allar, whose production dipped.
Allar had strongly considered leaving for the NFL after last season. Multiple scouts said they believe Allar would’ve been a first-round pick last year and noted several teams had him in the second tier, behind No. 1 pick Cam Ward, with Jaxson Dart, who went 25th overall to the New York Giants.
“People were very excited about him,” one NFL personnel executive said of Allar.
But after throwing a costly interception in the CFP semifinal, setting up Notre Dame‘s game-winning field goal, Allar opted to come back.
This season, fair or not, Allar came to symbolize Penn State’s tentative, uncertain approach.
At 6-foot-5, 235 pounds, boasting a powerful arm, Allar often played — or had been instructed to play — like a quarterback with far fewer natural gifts, said one source close to the program.
“You could just tell he had a self-monologue of, ‘Don’t screw it up, don’t throw a pick,’ just not playing very confidently,” a coach who faced Penn State said. “They just feel like a team that doesn’t know who they are.”
When Allar arrived at Penn State, he showed promise of becoming the player who had eluded the Nittany Lions. From Sean Clifford to Christian Hackenberg, Penn State had signed prototypical quarterback prospects before. But none under Franklin had developed into a passer capable of leading the Nittany Lions to a national championship or turning into a first-round pick.
As a sophomore in 2023, Allar threw 25 touchdowns with just two interceptions. The following offseason, Franklin hired Kotelnicki to unlock Penn State’s downfield passing attack.
Last season, Allar ranked 16th nationally with a QBR of 77.5. He also averaged 8.44 yards per attempt.
But this year, Allar’s play declined. He ranks just 91st with 6.9 yards per passing attempt, only a notch above the 6.8 he averaged two years ago. Allar also has an off-target passing rate of 13.3% this season, 12th worst among Power 4 quarterbacks.
“His accuracy was off all year,” a defensive coordinator who faced Penn State said.
NFL sources added that they felt the Nittany Lions operated like they didn’t fully trust him.
“And they have more information than we do,” one NFL personnel executive said. “When they needed him to put it on his back, you just never saw that. … But the other side of the argument is, his career so eerily mirrored Hackenberg, you do wonder if there’s a quarterback development issue.”
As if it couldn’t get any worse for Allar, late in the fourth quarter against Northwestern, while trying to run for a first down, he suffered a season-ending left leg injury. Having played more than four games in each of the past four seasons, Allar has exhausted his eligibility.
On Monday, tears welled in Kraft’s eyes as he spoke of Allar.
“Anyone who ever doubts that young man’s commitment to Penn State and Penn State football, you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Kraft said. “He’s one hell of a young man and he puts up with a lot of crap. … He wants to win in the worst way. To see it end that way, you never want that.”
DESPITE PENN STATE’S nightmare season, Kraft projected optimism about the program’s future.
“We have invested at the highest level,” he said. “Ultimately, I believe a new leader can help us win a national championship.”
Sources close to the program expect Kraft to swing for the fences in hiring a new coach. Possible candidates could include Indiana‘s Curt Cignetti, Iowa State‘s Matt Campbell, Texas A&M’s Mike Elko and Georgia Tech‘s Brent Key.
But all eyes will be on Nebraska coach Matt Rhule, who worked under Kraft at Temple. The two remain close.
Rhule won 10 games in 2015 and 2016 at Temple before taking the head job at Baylor.
In 2024, he led Nebraska to its first winning season in seven years; this fall, the Huskers are 5-1. Yet, those who have worked with Rhule in the past call Penn State “his dream job.”
This week, Rhule, a walk-on linebacker for the Nittany Lions under Joe Paterno in the 1990s, didn’t rule out a return to his alma mater.
“I love that place,” Rhule said. “I love Pat. I love James Franklin and am sad that came to an end. I wish him the absolute best. But I’m really happy here.”
Said a former Penn State staffer of Rhule: “They’re probably a perfect marriage. If you’re Pat, you hope Matt finishes really strong, and you can parade him in front of your donors. … [They have] to hire somebody who infuses confidence into the fan base.”
While Rhule enjoyed success at Temple and Baylor, taking the Bears to the Big 12 championship game in 2019, he too has struggled to win big games.
Over his stints at Temple, Baylor and Nebraska, Rhule is 0-11 against AP top-10 opponents and 2-23 against the Top 25. He had 18 upset wins and 13 upset losses during that time.
Only 53 years old, Franklin’s coaching career is likely far from finished.
On Sunday, he addressed the players in what sources characterized as an emotional meeting.
“The players really did love him,” one source said.
Penn State center and captain Nick Dawkins praised Franklin’s “contagious energy, fighter’s spirit, toughness and grit” on Tuesday.
“All the flak and criticism and boos and chants in the face of adversity, he remained a strong shoulder, remained stone cold for his players, for the university,” he said. “Standing tall for those that are standing with you.”
ESPN college football writers Paolo Uggetti and Max Olson contributed to this report.
Sports
The Bottom 10 won’t have James Franklin to kick around anymore
Published
4 hours agoon
October 16, 2025By
admin
-
Ryan McGee
Oct 15, 2025, 07:00 AM ET
Inspirational thought of the week:
“Are you surprised?”
“Surprised, Eddie? If I woke up tomorrow with my head sewn to the carpet, I wouldn’t be more surprised than I am right now.”
— Clark Griswold and Cousin Eddie, “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”
Here at Bottom 10 Headquarters, located behind the storage trailers that hold all of the makeup and rubber noses required to attempt to make Glen Powell look even remotely unattractive in “Chad Powers,” we, like Chad’s South Georgia Catfish teammates and coaching staff, sometimes struggle with recognizing who and what is actually standing before us. Then, when they reveal their true identities, which we’re assuming Chad will do at some point, we are left standing with our jaws on the floor and face in our hands like Hugh Freeze during another replay review.
See: Last week’s much-anticipated Pillow Fight of the Week of the Year Mega Bowl between what were then the Bottom 10 third-ranked UMess Minuetmen and the fourth-ranked State of Kent. And we weren’t alone in our anticipation of a close game. The wiseguys in the desert with their calculators next to the shrimp buffet had Kent as a 1.5-point favorite, and our ESPN Analytics team’s Ouija board Win Probability Index believed UMass had a 43.9% chance to emerge victorious.
Final score: Kent State 42, UMass 6.
See, Part 2: Penn State, which just three weekends ago came within a couple of knuckles of beating Oregon in overtime, was facing its second consecutive Bottom 10 contender, Northworstern, having lost to the then-ucLa Boo’ins the week before. And the Nittany Lions lost again, their third straight defeat, then fired James Franklin, who had coached them to within three points of playing for the national title just 10 months ago.
Let’s check on Penn State… pic.twitter.com/btJn0BbtgK
— Ryan McGee (@ESPNMcGee) October 11, 2025
The point is that no one knows what the hell we are talking about. But talking about it is so much fun. Well, for us it is so much fun. In Amherst, Massachusetts, and State College, Pennsylvania, they are looking out the window at the silent majesty of a winter’s morn and a guy in his bathrobe, emptying a chemical toilet into their sewer.
With apologies to former North Texas tight end Robert Griswold, former Northwestern tight end Bob Griswold, Cousin Eddie George and Steve Harvey, here are the post-Week 7 Bottom 10 rankings.
The Minuetmen are currently ranked 130th in points against, 135th in rushing yards and 136th in points for. They are also ranked 111th in passing yards. Do you think those other units look at the passing guys and say, “Stop making the rest of us look bad”?
The Beavers traveled to North Carolina and lost to Appalachian State, then hosted and lost to another North Carolina team in Wake Forest, then fired head coach Trent Bray, who wasn’t even the biggest Coach Trent to lose his job this week …
The good news for the Bearkats is they kame the klosest to akkcomplishing viktory as they have all season before sukkumbing to Jacksonville State Not Jacksonville City 29-27. Up next on the kalendar is a Konference USA Pillow Fight of the Week. Against whom do they klash? Keep scrolling …
Yep, it’s the Minors, who will travel to Sam Houston State on Wednesday night. Hopefully someone reminds them that Sam Houston State isn’t actually in Houston; it’s an hour north in Huntsville. Hopefully someone reminds them that it’s not the Huntsville in Alabama, but the one in Texas, one town over from Arizona, which hopefully someone reminds them is the Arizona town in Texas, not the state of Arizona.
Sources tell Bottom 10 JortsCenter that when James Franklin drove home from the office with his box of stuff, he was greeted in the driveway by Charlie Weis and Bobby Bonilla, who gave him a signed copy of “How To Make a Mattress From Your Pile of Money” by Scrooge McDuck.
The Woof Pack started the year with a loss to Penn State back when Happy Valley was still happy, and followed that with a win over Sacramento State. The rest of the year has been like another former Reno-based late-night show, HBO’s “Cathouse.” And just like that brothel reality program, we never admit that we’ve watched, but secretly we can’t look away.
If you were wondering when MTSU and Novada might play in their own version of the Pillow Fight of the Week, we have bad news. It already happened. The Blew Raiders scored two TDs in the final six minutes to win 14-13 back in Week 3.
When Trent Dilfer was fired by UAB, he went down to the locker room to tear a bunch of stuff up, but after 2½ seasons of him exploding like the red Anger guy from “Inside Out,” there was nothing left to break.
The Pillow Fight of the Week, Y’all Edition, is the college football equivalent of that pointing Spider-Man meme, as Georgia State Not Southern travels to Georgia Southern Not State, which is 2-4. The winner retains exclusive rights to “GSU” for the next year. The loser has to change all its logos to “GUS.”
For those of you — and we are talking to ourselves here — who are still bummed about the lack of substance in the UMass-Kent State game, picture in your mind Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda sitting on a Dagobah log as Luke Skywalker flies away to get his butt whipped by Darth Vader. “That boy was our last hope.” “No … there is another.” These Other Huskies travel to UMass on Nov. 12 … and host Kent State over Thanksgiving weekend. Also, how great would it be to see Obi-Wan and Yoda wearing #MACtion gear? Speaking of the Midwest, I’ve heard from a lot of Wisconsin fans that the Bad-gers should be in this spot. Yeah, I’ve seen your schedule. You’ll be here soon enough. To quote Luke’s dad — Skywalker, not Fickell — it is your destiny.
Waiting list: State of Kent, EMU Emus, South Alabama Redundancies, Oklahoma State No Pokes, Charlotte 1-and-5ers, Wisconsin Bad-gers, Bah-stan Cawledge, UNC Chapel Bill, clapping with fingers.
Sports
Reports: Yankees SS Volpe has shoulder surgery
Published
4 hours agoon
October 16, 2025By
admin
Anthony Volpe recently had surgery to repair a partially torn labrum in his left shoulder, according to multiple reports, jeopardizing his availability for the start of the 2026 season and further complicating the New York Yankees‘ plan at shortstop.
Volpe underwent the surgery Tuesday — less than a week after the end of his disappointing 2025 season — and was operated on by Yankees team physician Dr. Chris Ahmad, according to reports.
The New York Post first reported Volpe’s surgery Wednesday. The Yankees are expected to officially confirm the reports when general manager Brian Cashman and manager Aaron Boone hold their end-of-season news conference Thursday.
Volpe initially injured his shoulder in early May and was hampered by the injury throughout the season.
The former top prospect had two cortisone shots — one in July, and another in September — but Cashman indicated last month that the Yankees thought Volpe might avoid surgery.
Recovery timelines for labrum operations often vary, but the minimum time required to heal from the surgery is typically four months. Cashman and Boone are expected to discuss Volpe’s situation Thursday, but a lengthy recovery likely will force the Yankees to search for alternatives at shortstop.
Volpe’s future with the Yankees already was uncertain after he struggled throughout the season. The 2023 Gold Glove winner committed 19 errors — tied for the third most in the majors — and batted just .212 with a .663 OPS. He went 5-for-26 in New York’s seven postseason games, striking out 16 times.
Jose Caballero filled in for Volpe at shortstop over the final two months of the season, and the Yankees also could use Oswaldo Cabrera at the position.
Shortstop George Lombard Jr. is New York’s top minor league prospect, but the 20-year-old batted just .215 in 108 games at Double-A Somerset this season and is considered a long shot to make the Yankees’ Opening Day roster in 2026.
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